1. Anna Proctor
Grade Level: 11th Grade
Topic: World War II
Learning Objective:Students will gain a basic knowledge of World War II and an
understanding of the leaders involved in this war. They will also understand the
experiences of different veterans. After this activity, students will be able to
recognize major leaders, events, and experiences of WWII.
Directions: Follow the instructions of each section and then answer the
questions that follow. You will be given the whole class period to complete and
can take home the portion you don’t finish.
1. Go tohttp://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1661.html and read
through the Introduction and Causes of War. Answer the following:
When did WWII officially start and how many countries were involved?
What countries were the Allied Powers and what countries were the Axis
Powers?
How did the United States stay neutral at the beginning of the war?
What two events took place that redistributed power throughout the world
after WWI?
Why did the Axis power feel likeWWI handicapped them?
2. Complete these questions by scrolling through and reading
this information.
http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/WorldHistory/WorldWarII/WorldWarIIC
auses.htm
Who was the leader of the NSDAP (a.k.a. Nazi Party) and what did he
write while in jail after unsuccessfully trying to take over the German
government?

2. What happened at the Munich Conference and how did it help lead to
war?
How did Hitler secure that Russia would not invade them?
Explain in your own words the cartoon at the end of the webpage.
3. Watch this video http://youtu.be/lhVM0HmGadoto answer the
following questions about Adolf Hitler:
Watch until about 4 minutes and 5 seconds.
How did Hitler gain the courage to start the movement?
What type of government had Hitler created by eradicating all other
parties?
How would the re-rising of Germany happen?
From your previous knowledge what did Hitler believe about the Germans
and whom did he discriminate against?
In your opinion and observations of this video, how do you believe Hitler
got such large amounts of people behind him and his party? What are
some of his characteristics during his speeches?
4. Use this timeline for the following questions about two
important public
figures:http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/timeline/index.html

3. Who is this?
When was he born?
What battle did he participate in during 1898?
What party did he belong to?
What position did he resign from to fight in WWI?
What year did he lose the general election and what else happened?
What happened for him to become the chancellor and on what day?
What did Time Magazine award him?
When did he retire and later when did he die?
Who is this?
What degree did he receive and what college did he attend?
What president did he serve under and at what post?
What two difficulties did he encounter before he became
president?
What does he share in common with Winston Churchill? What years did
he receive this award?
What is one of the laws he signed into place that had an impact on the
war?
When did he declare war to enter United States into the WWII?

4. What record did he set and to this day is the only one to do this?
In what years?
When did he die and of what?
5. Go to http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/ww2/battles.cfm and go
through the different battles of WWII to answer these questions:
When did Germany start bombing cities instead of British airfields?
What battle lasted the entire war?
How many military divisions invaded at the Battle of Normandy?
What advances were made that virtually put an end to the usefulness of
submarines?
What countries were involved in the Battle of Normandy and what are the
sights of invasion?
What General led this battle and was fought in the Ardennes Mountains?
What battle signaled the beginning of the end for the Germans?
6. Click here http://youtu.be/J36IQmVriw8 for an interactive map
of the Pacific Theater of WWII and answer the following:
What instantly brought the United States into the war?
When did Japan reach its wartime peak?

5. What did General Yamamoto come up with but what happened instead?
Who was the major U.S. Generals in the Pacific and where did they
annihilate the Imperial Army?
What secured the flight path for the United States from Saipan to Tokyo?
What did President Truman do to end the war?
Did the first attempt cause Japan to surrender?
7. Go to http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/ to discover more
about the Holocaust.
What scientific theory did Hitler exploit in the Holocaust?
Explain the idea behind the genocide.
With your experience with this topic, what are your thoughts and feelings
about the Holocaust? What is your response to Hitler’s determination to
purify the race?
8. Use http://history1900s.about.com/od/holocaust/ss /Camps-
Map.htm for the following:
What is the difference between concentration camps and extermination
camps?

6. Click on the map to fill this in map with countries, concentration
camps, and extermination camps.
9. Watch this video: http://www.history.com/shows/wwii-in-
hd/videos/concentration-camp-liberation#concentration-camp-
liberation
What did Rockie Blunt say happened when he first came across
concentration camps?
What did the prisoners do when soldiers arrived to liberate them?

7. What did they make the soldiers promise?
10. Watch Charles Scheffel’s interview about his experience in the
war and answer the following
questions:http://www.history.com/shows/wwii-in-hd/videos/charles-
scheffel
What did he say it was a horrible feeling?
What was his first thought when he entered North Africa?
Who did he attribute to saving his life?
Watch Jimmie Kayana’s interview:
Why did he think that the military was his route?
Why didn’t his family move back to Japan?
In turn, what happened to his family?
Why is Jimmie’s experience different? What did he have to do?
What surprised him while he was a POW?
Watch Jack Werner’s interview:
Where was he born?
When did he arrive in New York and what did he particularly like about
America?
Why did he join the army?

8. How did he meet his wife?
11. Please watchhttp://youtu.be/jN54KXEnxf4
Please respond and tell me how this impacts you:
ANSWER KEY:
1. September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland
50 countries were involved
- Germany, Italy, Japan are the Axis
United States, France, Britain, Soviet Union, and China are Allied
- Neutrality Acts and the Lend Lease Act
- WWI and the Great Depression
- Germany, Italy, and Japan were anxious to regain power and they
adopted dictatorships. The League of Nations was unable to promote

9. disarmament. Adolf Hitler immediately started rebuilding German
armies when he came into power. Also, Germany, Italy, and Japan
could reach other nations for markets, raw materials, and colonies as
other countries could.
2. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
- They decided that Hitler could have Czechoslovakia if he promised not
to invade any more countries. As soon as Hitler occupied the
Sudetenland, he proceeded to take over all of Czechoslovakia.
- Nazi-Soviet Act
- Answers will vary. Something like the two different animals represents
the two countries and their relationship to the Nazi-Soviet Act.
3. He encountered two groups of people, the country people and German
workers
- A dictatorship, totalitarian state
- That Germans were the only right race and all others not like them
should be exterminated. The one true race, the Ayrian Race
- Answers will vary. Something like he gave them hope in a desperate
time, and provided them with a future that looked less dire than what
they were in. He is very engaging and passionate about the
movement. He was very charismatic.
4. Winston Churchill
- November 30, 1874
- The Battle of Omdurman in Sudan
- British Conservative Party
- First Lord of the Admiralty
- 1922 and he is ousted of parliament
- May 10, 1940 Neville Chamberlin steps down making Churchill Prime
Minister on the day Germany invade France, Belgium, and the
Netherlands.
- “Man of the Year” of 1940
- April 5, 1955 and died January 24, 1965
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- History degree from Harvard University
- Assistant Secretary to the Navy under Woodrow Wilson
- He ran for vice-president and lost, contracted Polio
- “Man of the Year” from Time Magazine; 1932, 1934, 1941
- Lend-Lease Act
- December 7, 1941
- He was elected to 4 terms of office 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944
- April 12, 1945, cerebral hemorrhage
5. Late August 1940
- Battle of the Atlantic
- 8 divisions
- Aircraft, escort carriers, sonar and depth charge technologies
- America, Utah and Omaha; Britain, Sword and Gold; Canada, Juno

10. - General Patton
- Battle of Bulge
6. The bombing of Pearl Harbor
- June 1942
- An invasion at Midway but it was decoded by American troops
- General McArthur and Nimitz, Leyte Gulf
- Capture of Iwo Jima
- Dropped the atomic bomb
- No there was a second bomb dropped
7. Social Darwinism
- Hitler claimed that Germany never really lost World War I but was
stabbed in the back by a Jewish/Communist conspiracy. The discovery
of a scapegoat gave the Germans something to work toward
eliminating. The anger and humiliation was now directed away from
themselves, Germans could focus all of their negativity on the Jews.
Nazism became widespread and its oppression of the Jews grew into
the genocide that was the Holocaust.
- Answers will vary
8. Concentrations camps were meant to hold political prisoners,
extermination camps were also death camps to exterminate Jews and
Gypsies.
- Map should look something like this:

11. 9. “You look but you don’t see. You listen but don’t hear. Your mind closes
up.”
- They tried to touch them with just one finger. They reach through the
gates to touch them to make sure the soldiers were real.
- To never let the world forget what this looked like.
10. That killing was because he knew he was killing some of his family. He
was a first generation German. Scheffel is as German as it gets.
- That he needed to get his men out of what he had just put them in.
- His men and their duty and honor
- The uniformity, conformity, and obedience
- Because he entered the army
- They were interned in the Japanese relocation camps
- He was Japanese fighting against his homeland. His troops had to
fight for respect and prove their allegiance to the US. They had to give
it their all.
- He thought he would have been treated different because he was
Japanese, but he wasn’t. He gained close friendships and they all
looked out for each other.
- Vienna, 1920

12. - May of 1939, Europe was in great speculation and the US was fun,
exciting, new, and lively
- After his experience as a Jew in Austria he wanted to fight against
Hitler.
- She was in a concentration camp as a captured Jew.
11. Answers will vary.